Constitutional conventions: best practice

Today marks ten years since the start of the Nord-Ost theatre siege, which ended tragically with a bungled special forces operation and the deaths of at least 170 people. Irina Borogan and Andrei Soldatov, reporters on the scene, reflect on those dramatic days and the lack of a proper investigation since.

The draft law currently going through the Duma could definitely be regarded as tightening the screws on relationships between Russians and foreign organisations or individuals. A worrying turn of events, thinks Andrey Soldatov (photo: RIA Novosti Agency)

Russia’s police are starting to use unmanned drones much more often for monitoring street protest rallies, Irina Borogan and Andrei Soldatov report. This sinister development has the complete support of President Putin.

On July 11, the Russian Duma passed legislation to establish a central register of extremist websites. The new laws are ostensibly designed for child protection; Andrei Soldatov senses the real aim is to take control over the country’s burgeoning social networks.

The Kremlin’s nervous reaction to May’s ‘March of the Millions’ on Bolotnaya Square, and uncertainty around a protest action planned for tomorrow have led many to suspect that the Russian government is looking seriously at using force to suppress opposition. Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan analyse the resources at its disposal.

In a previous article, Irina Borogan and Andrei Soldatov asked who was bugging the Russian opposition. Here they develop this theme, looking at how a combination of recent legislation and new technology has allowed Russia’s many security agencies to expand their activities still further.

The recent Russian parliamentary and presidential elections were notable for the wide use of cyber attacks on the websites of the liberal media, as well as opposition hackers accessing officials’ intranet email exchanges. But was this a question of large-scale collusion between the Kremlin and professional hackers, or an altogether more amateur effort by political activists? In the latest article in their ‘Project ID’ series, Irina Borogan and Andrei Soldatov investigate the destructive forces targeting the Russian internet.

The Russian authorities became aware of the power of social media late, but have since been making up for lost time with a campaign of dirty tricks
against the opposition’s web presence. Irina Borogan and Andrey Soldatov
outline the history of the government’s strategy and assess its effectiveness.

The 2011-12 election cycle has seen the full catalogue of dirty surveillance tricks return to Russian politics, from covert video recording to phone hacking of opposition leaders. Most have pointed the finger of suspicion directly at the door of the FSB. In reality, any one of a number of agencies could have been at work.

In December 2011, Wikileaks released ‘Spy Files’, a project revealing details of the burgeoning surveillance and interception industry. The list of companies providing high-tech equipment to governments included a number of Russian firms, which are emerging as global leaders in the industry. Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan took to investigate how the Soviet Union’s expertise in spy technology is being adapted to the new reality of global capitalism.

As Russia’s largest and best organised ‘horizontal’ community in Russia, football fans have found themselves at the centre of governmental attempts to control informal groups, write Irina Borogan and Andrei Soldatov. Perhaps more surprisingly, they have also become guinea pigs for international data exchange programmes, with Russian authorities picking up the very worst of surveillance practices from their foreign colleagues.

Moscow’s protest movement is gathering momentum, bringing in greater numbers and a wider constituency of supporters. What is as yet unclear, however, is whether it has the organisational clout to become a sustained force for change, write Irina Borogan and Andrei Soldatov.

For years, a pact of loyalty in exchange for roubles fostered the growth of a largely apolitical middle class in Russia. On Saturday, that middle class turned against their creator. They are, however, some way off uniting behind a single opposition candidate, write Irina Borogan and Andrei Soldatov.

President Medvedev has made much of Russia’s need for modernisation and advanced technology. One project piloted in some Moscow metro stations involves face recognition using biometric technology. This can clearly be used as protection against terrorism, but given that the organisation which commissioned the project is the FSB, information gained could also be used for other purposes, say Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan

The Russian blogosphere has burgeoned into a open-door sanctuary for all strands of political opinion. Predictably, it has also attracted the attention of the country's security services. Irina Borogan and Andrei Soldatov present the first in a series of investigations outlining how the Russian state is now monitoring its online public.